Forewarned, Forearmed. The defenders of the city will not be misled by a 'superb' figure-head.

In this
cartoon, A. B. Frost adapts the story of the
Trojan Horse to the 1880 presidential election.According to myth, Paris, a son of the king of Troy, ran away
with Helen, the daughter of Zeus, the Greek god, and Leda, the queen of
Sparta. In retaliation, the Greeks
sent a military expedition to rescue Helen. After laying siege to
Troy for 10 years, the Greeks constructed a gigantic wooden horse with a secret
interior room where Greek soldiers were hidden.The rest of the Greeks feigned retreat while the Trojan Horse was
delivered to the gates of the city.Assuming the Greeks had surrendered, the Trojan soldiers accepted the
gift as an act of appeasement and celebrated their good
fortune with a night of drunken revelry.With the inebriated Troy soldiers unconscious or stupefied, their
Greek counterparts emerged from the wooden beast to capture and burn the
city.

Here,
the cartoonist warns the public not to be fooled by their esteem for General Winfield
Hancock.The presidential nominee is a Trojan Horse, an empty
political vessel who will allow
the deceitful Democratic Party to take over the American government.They will use national office not for the public good, but for
their own personal gain and wild schemes. Throughout the campaign,
Frost, Thomas Nast, and other cartoonists for Harper's Weekly
repeated the message the Hancock, while a giant for his Civil War
heroism, was controlled by the disreputable and dangerous forces of the
Democratic Party. (Nast drew him as Gulliver tied down by
Lilliputian Democrats.)

Born
in Pennsylvania in 1824, Winfield Scott Hancock was named after
Winfield Scott, a hero of the War of 1812.
After attending a local school, Hancock was appointed to the U. S. Military Academy at West Point,
where he
graduated in 1844. He was assigned to the Sixth Infantry, and
served in the Mexican War during its last month, winning promotion to first lieutenant.In the 1850s, he served at Fort Leavenworth during the violence of “Bleeding
Kansas” and in Utah during the “Mormon War.”

When the Civil War began, Hancock was captain and
chief quartermaster of the Southern District of California.On September 23, 1861, he was named brigadier general of
volunteers and served in the Army of the Potomac under George McClellan,
who nicknamed him “Superb” after the Battle of Williamsburg (May 5,
1862).Promoted to major
general after Antietam (September 17, 1862), he performed with heroic
distinction at Chancellorsville (May 1-4, 1863) and Gettysburg (July
1-3, 1863).

As
a corps
commander at Gettysburg, a wounded Hancock inspired his men to
withstand the last, valiant effort by the Confederates, known as
Pickett’s Charge.In the
spring of 1864, after six months of medical leave, Hancock returned as
corps commander in Virginia under Ulysses S. Grant.He fought in several battles—the Wilderness, North Anna River,
Cold Harbor, and Petersburg—before the reopening of his wound forced
him from active duty.

After the war, Hancock was promoted to the rank of
major general (July 26, 1866) and served in the Indian wars in the West
before assuming command of the Fifth Military District (Texas and
Louisiana) during Reconstruction.When
it became clear that his understanding of Reconstruction resembled
President Andrew Johnson’s, Grant, who sympathized with the Radical
Republicans, reassigned him to the Department of Dakota in 1869.In 1872, Hancock became commander of the Atlantic division,
headquartered at Governor's Island, New York.

As
early as 1864, some Democrats considered Hancock their best hope to
wrest the presidency away from the Republicans. By 1880, the Democratic
Party, which had not elected a president
since 1856, had regained some of the national prominence it held before
the Civil War.In 1876, its
nominee, New York governor Samuel Tilden, won the popular vote
and narrowly lost the White House in an Electoral College controversy.In 1878, Democrats captured control of both houses of Congress
for the first time in twenty years.

In
1880, Democrats believed the American electorate was ready for a Democratic
president again. Tilden and Horatio Seymour, who had defeated
Hancock to become the 1868 nominee, both declined to seek the nomination
in 1880. At the Democratic National Convention, Hancock swept to
victory on the second ballot over Senator Thomas Bayard of Delaware and
House Speaker Samuel Randall of Pennsylvania. William English, a
wealthy banker and former congressman, was selected as the
vice-presidential nominee.

Republicans attacked Hancock’s lack of
political experience (he had never held elective office) and his
supposed lack of understanding of the issues.A satiric Republican pamphlet of Hancock's "Political
Achievements" contained blank pages.When
the Democratic nominee told the Paterson, New Jersey, Daily
Guardian (published October 8) that “the tariff question is a
local question,” he was skewered by Republicans and the press for his
ignorance. In fact, Hancock meant that the divisive issue should be decided by the voters through
their elected representatives in Congress, a position taken by several
politicians, including, as Democratic leaders eagerly pointed out,
Congressman James Garfield, the Republican nominee.Perception trumped reality, however, and Hancock’s
explanation only made matters worse.

The
Democratic nominee was hurt even more by a bitter struggle in New York
between two Democratic factions, Tammany Hall and Irving Hall, which
likely cost him New York and hence the election. In November, Garfield edged by Hancock in the popular count by
only one-tenth of a percent, 48.3% to 48.2%, and 214-155 in the
Electoral College, the difference of New York’s 35 electoral
votes. After the election, Hancock continued serving in the army at Governors
Island until his death in 1886.

In the lower-left
of this cartoon stand the symbols of the Southern
and Northern wings of the Democratic Party, the former Confederate
soldier and a "shoulder-hitter" (a strongman for an
urban political machine).The Southern
Democrat holds a staff reading “Rag Money,” a reference to the
inflationist “soft-money” position of many Democrats.The Northern Democrat grasps a staff reading “Spoils" (meaning political
patronage) on which a predatory vulture perches.In the lower right is Henry Watterson, editor of the Louisville
Courier-Journal, which marches beside him.During the crisis over the disputed 1876 Electoral College
returns, Watterson threatened that “100,000 men” would march on the
Capitol if Democrat Samuel Tilden were not declared the presidential victor.

An uncomfortable Tilden is being
hoisted to the top of the horse, as he clutches his barrel of money.His “Cipher nephew,” Colonel William Pelton climbs up the
ladder beside him.On the
rung below him, Senator Daniel Voorhees of Indiana wields his sword
aloft.In the box atop the
horse sits a sullen Speaker Randall, who lost the nomination to Hancock.Randall is flanked by the 1868 Democratic ticket: bald-headed
presidential nominee Horatio Seymour on the left and vice-presidential
nominee Frank Blair on the right.In
a position to guide the entire operation from the forehead of the
nominee is Tammany boss John Kelly.The ferocious emblem on the front of the Trojan Horse seems to be
a combination of a tiger, symbolizing Tammany Hall and (through guilt by
association) the national Democratic Party, along with perhaps a
bloodthirsty bat or a nocturnal owl.